Assembly should start meetings
with some silent contemplation
Dear Members of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly,
As you once again will be visiting the policy on invocations I would like to put in my two cents’ worth.
Why not start assembly meetings with one or two minutes of silent contemplation rather than an out loud invocation from a resident of the Kenai Peninsula? This would give those who are religious the opportunity to silently send a personal prayer for guidance. Those who are not religious could contemplate how they can best serve their constituents on the agenda at hand.
All of you have a difficult and often thankless job. Your time is valuable and you may be coming to a meeting already frenzied from other responsibilities. A few minutes of silent transition could be a welcome relief.
There is no lack of religious congregations on the Kenai Peninsula. It would be strange for them to adopt a regulation requiring a secular invocation at the beginning of their services. The assembly is a governmental entity with much secular business to attend to. There is no need for it to seek formal invocations from citizens before it can conduct meetings.
If citizens have wisdom to impart, let them do it through letters or emails as I have done, through attendance at meetings or through editorials in the newspaper.
Thank you for your consideration,
Diana Conway
Halibut Cove/Homer
TRAILS counts its blessings
The TRAILS Program would like to send a big thank you to all the individuals, organizations, and businesses that made the TRAILS Thanksgiving Celebration happen.
Thank you to Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center for letting us turn their seminar room into a festive banquet hall. Thanks to Susan from Journeys and TRAILS volunteer Susan for the festive decorating. The traditional Thanksgiving meal was so good. Thanks to Jenny for the mashed potatoes, Head Chef Susan from Journeys for the turkey, gravy, stuffing and green bean casserole. Thanks to Safeway for donating cranberries for cranberry sauce and the thick delicious eggnog.
After dinner many enjoyed a wintery stroll down to Bishops Beach Pavilion and were met by a roaring warm bonfire (thanks, Scott) where we ate delicious apple and pumpkin pies donated by Save U More.
So many thanks for this Thanksgiving celebration.
What a wonderful community we have.
Tela Bacher and The Independent Living Center’s TRAILS program
Entire community will benefit
from work of pavilion volunteers
A big thank you to all the volunteers who endured some nasty weather and local businesses who helped get the pavilion up and the roof on.
The Kachemak Bay Water Trail and The Friends of Kachemak Bay State Park have been working on the Water Trail Pavilion Project next to the Nick Dudiak Fishing Lagoon for several years. After all the planning and work spent raising funds we contacted local Russ Walker’s Alaska Timber Frame Company. Russ agreed to mill the frame and supervise the construction at cost. Ben Oien of Oien Associates engineered the structure. Alaska Timber Frame’s two employees Steve and Nels did a great job milling the timbers and keeping our volunteer crew in line as Mike Kennedy lifted timbers into place. Larry Smith along with Rich Sonnen and Brandon Sam installed the metal roof just ahead of the winter weather.
This project would not have been possible without the funding support of the City of Homer, The Rasmuson Foundation, The Homer-Kachemak Rotary Club, The Homer Foundation Steve Yoshida Fund and Jane Little Fund, Cook Inletkeeper, Kachemak Bay Wooden Boat Society, Alaska Department of Fish and Game — Division of Wildlife Conservation, Techno Post Alaska, Rick Rosenbloom, Larry Smith, Atz and Bonny Kilcher, Dave and Molly Brann, Robert Archibald and Friends of Kachemak Bay State Park.
A big thanks to Wakeen Brown and folks at Spenard Builders for their generous help and support on this project.
We are planning more improvements to the pavilion area to make it family friendly.
A great job done by all which the Citizens of Homer will be the beneficiaries.
Robert Archibald and Dave Brann
Co-Chairs, Kachemak Bay Water Trail
Board Members,
Friends of Kachemak Bay State Park
Many made office space happen
Kachemak Heritage Land Trust is pleased to report the completion of a small two-person office space on our in-town Poopdeck property. This new building was purchased with funds from the Rasmuson Foundation, with funds for the heaters from the Homer Foundation’s Willow Fund. Shout outs to the multiple volunteers who helped make this project possible, including Jason Johnson, HoWL DiRtBaG crew, S&K Enterprises, Dave Mogar, Dale Chorman, Joe Witteberry, David Stutzer, and board members Sam Means and Joey Allred.
Thanks!
Marie McCarty, executive director
Kachemak Heritage Land Trust
Trump was, by far, better
of candidates before voters
As I write this, I have yet to hear or see or read the fall-out from my letter to the editor in the Nov. 17 edition of the Homer News, but I am fairly certain it will include several references to me riding the “short bus” and being a racist or homophobe or any other such labels that the liberal mindset must place on everyone they encounter.
Just to clarify, I only address my letters to any and all who want to read them. If you scan the letters and see my name at the bottom of the article, and you don’t want to hear the truth as I see it, move on. If you think I am pinpointing a particular person as I have done in the past, you may be right, but usually I am addressing a group of people who may or may not have the same thought philosophy as I do.
For instance, there is a little blue car running around town that the owner — no, I don’t know him/her — spent the extra money to purchase custom license plates. They bought the “In God We Trust” plates, then had them customized to read “Not.” OK, to each his own, but to most people, all you have done if you wish to be an atheist is say to the world, I believe in God enough to tell everyone that there is no God. I even spent extra money just to say it.
This is absolutely no different than protesting in the street because you didn’t get your way in an election. Now I see where colleges, the so-called institutions of higher learning, are allowing students to forego their mid-term exams because they are so distraught over the election that they just can’t think anymore.
What kind of generation is this? If the diversity of this country is so overwhelming to their fragile minds, and they can’t accept the result of an election, and now they just simply can’t carry on in their day-to-day lives, what will they do when they become adults? How will they react when they are actually in the workplace and something unexpected pops up? Will they just crawl into their “safe zone” and suck their thumbs until the trouble passes?
Wake up, people. Stop raising a generation of victims. We all see the commercials they tell us to teach our children to stand up to bullies, yet at the same time, we teach our children that they need to be the victim of words and that words “hurt.”
While not a Trump Train guy necessarily, he was by far the better choice of the candidates we were offered this round. A business acumen in the White House, instead of a Santa Claus, is going to be far better than any socialist candidate or liberal that thinks the working class must pay for the ones that don’t or won’t work
In the last eight years of this total disaster of Owe-bama, I’ve watched my wages stay the same, while my taxes have increased, all to pay for programs that bring, well, basically the enemy of this country into our borders, just to get treated better than those who served this country, which ironically enough, are the men and women who gave liberals the right to exist.
So, say what you want, be angry, be pouty, block the roads and throw a hissy fit because you didn’t get your way. But just remember, those are the actions that caused the election to go the way it did.
We, as a nation, are tired of the poltically correct B.S. that seems to run the weak-minded leadership, and we fought back.
Deal with it.
Phil Celtic
